The scope of the Corporate Transparency Index measures the level of information that companies must share about their board members, officers, annual meetings and audits. This index varies from 0 to 7 and has 7 components. In April 2009, the World Bank published a communication on revisions to the Wage Labour Index. [47] The note explained that the assessment of the employee indicator in Doing Business 2010 will be updated in order to obtain favourable assessments of compliance with the relevant ILO Conventions. The Labour Force Indicator has also been removed as a guide for evaluations of national policies and institutions that help determine the resources available to IDA countries. = Make business a reform that makes it easier to do business. = Change that makes it harder to do business. In 2008, the World Bank Group`s Independent Evaluation Group, a semi-independent oversight body within the World Bank Group, released an assessment of the Doing Business Index. [46] The report Doing Business: An Independent Evaluation contained both praise and criticism of Doing Business. The report recommended that the index be clearer about what is being measured and what is not, disclose changes to published data, recruit more informants, and simplify the tax payment indicator. The report was primarily a baseline study on regulation. The survey consisted of a questionnaire designed by the Doing Business team with the support of educational advisors.

The questionnaire focused on a simple business case that ensures comparability across economies and over time. The investigation was also based on assumptions about the legal form of the company, the size, location and nature of its activities. [11] The Ease of Doing Business Index should measure regulations that directly affect businesses, rather than broader conditions such as a country`s proximity to large markets, quality of infrastructure, inflation or crime. “For the authorities of the countries, this throws a bright, sometimes unflattering light on the regulatory aspects of their business climate. For the interests of business, it has helped to catalyze debate and dialogue on reforms. For the World Bank Group, this demonstrates the ability to provide global knowledge regardless of resource transfer and conditionality. The annual exercise generates relevant and useful information. Doing Business was a controversial study with passionate critics and devoted fans. As acknowledged by the World Bank`s Independent Evaluation Group, some have questioned the reliability and objectivity of their measures, while others doubt the relevance of the issues they raise or fear that they will overdo countries` reform agendas to the detriment of larger development goals. Attention to indicators may inadvertently indicate that the World Bank Group places more emphasis on less burdensome corporate regulations than on its other poverty reduction and sustainable development strategies. In September 2021, the World Bank announced that it would abandon the Doing Business report following the release of an independent report detailing the details of the 2020 and 2018 irregularities, including detailed explanations of how the bank`s senior executives manipulated the data and pressured experts to change rankings and methodology to improve the scores of certain countries. [34] [10] The ease with which companies can obtain property rights is illustrated below.

This includes the number of steps, time required and costs associated with real property registration. The Judicial Process Quality Index measures whether each economy has adopted a set of best practices in its justice system in four areas: court structure and procedures, case management, court automation and alternative dispute resolution. On January 12, 2018, Paul Romer, Chief Economist of the World Bank, announced that previous publications of the index that were at least four years old would be corrected and recalculated. Romer apologized to Chile, saying the former director of the group responsible for the index had repeatedly manipulated his methodology and unfairly punished the country`s rankings under the government of left-wing President Michelle Bachelet. In response, Bachelet announced that Chile would formally request a full investigation from the World Bank. [23] [24] Singapore topped the Ease of Doing Business ranking in 2007-2016. [53] Based on Singapore`s experience, IDA International works with public authorities in several countries in areas such as ICT strategy, Infocomm`s national planning, and the implementation of solutions that can help facilitate business. An interesting fact is that although rich countries are ranked higher on average than poor countries, there are a few notable exceptions, especially oil-rich countries. For example, Kuwait (rank 83), Qatar (rank 77), Oman (rank 68), Saudi Arabia (rank 62). Compare with low-income countries: India (ranked 63rd), Kenya (ranked 56th), Colombia (ranked 67th), Uzbekistan (ranked 69th). Notable exceptions are Norway (rank 9) and the United Arab Emirates (rank 16). [54] The Utility Rate Reliability and Transparency Index is calculated based on the following six components: duration and frequency of power outages, power outage monitoring tools, power restoration tools, regulatory monitoring of utility performance, financial deterrents to limit outages, and rate transparency and accessibility.

According to DB, the regulation is important for private sector development, and several reforms are proposed throughout the report to promote private sector development and enable the business environment. Some of the highlighted results of the DB are as follows: Note: If no new commercial connection has been allocated to the power grid in a given year, or if no electricity is supplied during that period, the economy receives a “no practice” rating for the procedural, time and cost indicators. A “no practice” economy receives a score of 0 for the reliability of the offer and the transparency of the tariff index, regardless of the regulatory practices that apply to the reliability of the offer and the transparency of the tariffs. More than 3,000 scientific papers used the index data. [19] Better regulation is claimed to have a very strong impact on economic growth. The shift from the worst quarter of nations to the best quarter means an increase in annual growth of 2.3 percentage points. Another 7,000 working papers in the economics and social sciences departments use data from the Doing Business report. The winner of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Economics, Oliver Hart, is one of the authors of such work.

A study commissioned by the Norwegian government points to methodological weaknesses, uncertainty about the ability of indicators to capture the underlying business climate, and a general concern that it may be easier for many countries to change their ranking in Doing Business than to change the underlying business environment. [48] This index measures the extent to which collateral and bankruptcy laws protect the rights of borrowers and lenders and thus facilitate lending. The post-filing index is based on four components: the time it takes to comply with the VAT refund, the time to receive a VAT refund, the time to comply with a corporate tax adjustment, and the time to make a corporate tax adjustment. If VAT and corporate income tax apply, the post-ranking index is the simple average of the scores for each of the four components. If only VAT or corporate tax is incurred, the post-ranking index is the simple average of the scores for the two components related to the applicable tax. If there is no VAT or corporate tax, the post-ranking index is not included in the order of priority of the tax payment facility. Warning: Even though the legal framework of the economy contains provisions relating to insolvency proceedings (liquidation or reorganization), the economy receives 0 points for the strength of the insolvency framework index when time, cost and result indicators are recorded as “no practice”.â In 2017, the study contains quantitative measures of regulations for the creation of a business, processing building permits, employing employees, registering property, getting loans, protecting investors and taxes, acting across borders, enforcing contracts, getting an electrical connection and closing a business. The introduction to the study states: “A fundamental premise of DB is that economic activity requires good rules.

These include rules that establish and clarify property rights and reduce the cost of dispute resolution, rules that increase the predictability of economic interactions, and rules that provide entrepreneurs with central protection against abuse. After these revelations, some organizations suspended the use of Doing Business data and supplemented these reports with data from alternative indicators that measure the same concepts. [30] On December 16, 2020, the World Bank published 3 reports on the findings of reviews investigating data irregularities:[31] In 2013, an independent body appointed by the President of the World Bank and chaired by Trevor Manuel of South Africa published a review expressing concern about the possibility of misinterpretation of the report and index. and the narrowness of the indicators and the information base. It recommended keeping the report, but removing aggregate rankings and (among other things) introducing a peer review process. Regarding the issues of tax payments and the employment of workers, she noted that “the latter have already been excluded from the ranking of the report. While there are compelling reasons to pay attention to these aspects of business conduct, the Bank needs to carefully consider how to properly assess the regulation and legal environment in these areas if these indicators are to be maintained. [49] The challenges a business needs to obtain a permanent electrical connection for a newly built warehouse are listed below.